A prophetic moment occurred at the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit. At the end of the second day’s session, which had gone two hours past schedule and left no more than 50 delegates standing in the General Assembly Hall, Native American Chief Oren Lyons and members of 50 tribes from around the world assembled on the stage in full feathered headdress and ceremonial attire. Chief Lyons said:

“People, we come to you tonight with an urgent message. Two weeks ago, a runner from Greenland arrived carrying serious news. He told us that the ice that has covered the sacred mountain for as far back as we have our people’s history has begun to melt. What started as a drop of water and turned into a current has now become a rushing stream of water and a lake has formed at the bottom of the mountain. People, we come here tonight to tell you this: the ice in the north is melting.”

Just moments earlier, three members of the Tibetan High Delegation had taken to the stage to protest the exclusion of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama from the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. A member of the Tibetan Delegation read the entire text of a proclamation to be signed by participants protesting His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s exclusion from the Summit.

Adding to their call of protest, Oren Lyons said, “We protest the exclusion of our elder brother, the Dalai Lama, from the Summit.” At that moment, the Medicine Drum began to sound, a deep, gonglike beating like the sound of the heartbeat, the heartbeat of the cosmos, filling the General Assembly, a sound with a message direct from the earth: “People, the ice in the north is melting.”